George C. Edwards III is University Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Jordan Chair in Presidential Studies Emeritus at Texas A&M University and distinguished fellow at the University of Oxford. He is a leading scholar of American politics, particularly of the American presidency, authoring or editing 28 books and approximately 100 articles and essays.
 | This section of a biography of a living person does not include any references or sources .(November 2022) |
Edwards was born in Rochester, New York, in 1947 and moved with his family to Florida in 1959. He received his B.A. from Stetson University (1969) and his M.A. (1970) and Ph.D. (1973) from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He also has an honorary M.A. from the University of Oxford.
He taught at Tulane University from 1973 to 1978 before moving to Texas A&M University in 1978. He was the founder and from 1991 to 2001 the director of The Center for Presidential Studies. From 1998 until 2022 he was editor of Presidential Studies Quarterly . [1] He is also general editor of the Oxford Handbook of American Politics. [2] He is currently University Distinguished Professor and Jordan Chair in Presidential Studies Emeritus at Texas A&M University and Distinguished Fellow at the University of Oxford.
Edwards has held a number of visiting appointments, including:
He has advised Brazil on its constitution and the operation of its presidency, Russia on building a democratic national party system, Mexico on elections, and Chinese scholars on democracy. He also wrote studies for the 1988, 2000, 2008, 2016, and 2020 U.S. presidential transitions and was instrumental in bringing the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum to Texas A&M University's campus.
Edwards's principal focus has been the American presidency. This work has focused on several themes. First, He pioneered the quantitative study of the presidency with Presidential Influence in Congress, the first quantitative study of the presidency [3] and has edited three volumes on theory and methods of researching the presidency: The Oxford Handbook of the American Presidency; [4] Researching the Presidency; [5] and Studying the Presidency. [6]
His second focus has been presidential leadership in Congress. He has written that presidents are highly dependent on the strategic position in which they find themselves and can only influence Congress at the margins. [7] Edwards has also written widely on the president's relations with the public, particularly their efforts to lead public opinion. He has reported that presidents are rarely able to move the public in their direction. Despite all their efforts, their words typically fall on deaf ears. [8]
In recent years, he has fashioned his empirical findings into a theory of presidential leadership that challenges the view that presidential power is the power to persuade. Instead, he argues, presidential power is the power to recognize and exploit opportunities. In other words, presidents cannot create opportunities for change and must understand and take advantage of whatever possibilities for change already exist. [9] [10] In early 2009, he predicted the problems President Barack Obama would face, despite the declarations of many insiders the new president would transform the political landscape and thus pave the way for major changes in policy. He confirmed these predictions in two books. [11] In 2016, he predicted that despite his reputed promotional and negotiating skills, Donald Trump would not succeed in persuading either the public or Congress to follow his lead, which his subsequent research confirmed. [12]
He has also written on reforming the Electoral College and has written and spoken widely on the subject. [13] He also was among the first authors to devote attention to implementing public policy, especially the president's role as chief executive. [14] Most recently, Edwards tackled the area of decision making, arguing that presidents and other top officials often make disastrous decisions because they are prisoners of faulty premises. [15]
Nuffield College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. It is a graduate college specialising in the social sciences, particularly economics, politics and sociology. Nuffield is one of Oxford's newer colleges, having been founded in 1937, as well as one of the smallest, with only around 90 students and 60 academic fellows. It was also the first Oxford college to accept both men and women, having been coeducational since foundation, as well as being the first college exclusively for graduate students in either Oxford or Cambridge.
Yale College is the undergraduate college of Yale University. Founded in 1701, it is the original school of the university. Although other Yale schools were founded as early as 1810, all of Yale was officially known as Yale College until 1887, when its schools were confederated and the institution was renamed Yale University. It is ranked as one of the top colleges in the United States.
Hanna Holborn Gray is an American historian of Renaissance and Reformation political thought and Professor of History Emerita at the University of Chicago. She served as president of the University of Chicago, from 1978 to 1993, having earlier served as president pro tempore of Yale University in 1977–1978. At both schools, she was the first woman to hold their highest executive office. When named to the post in Chicago, she became one of the first women in the United States to hold the full presidency of a major university.
Neil Leon Rudenstine is an American scholar, educator, and administrator. He served as president of Harvard University from 1991 to 2001.
Sir Philip Chase Bobbitt is an American legal scholar and political theorist. He is best known for work on U.S. constitutional law and theory, and on the relationship between law, strategy and history in creating and sustaining the State. He is currently the Herbert Wechsler Professor of Jurisprudence at Columbia Law School and a distinguished senior lecturer at The University of Texas School of Law.
Harold Tafler Shapiro is an economist and university administrator. He is currently a professor of economics and public affairs at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. Shapiro served as the president of University of Michigan from 1980 to 1988 and as the president of Princeton University from 1988 to 2001.
Marvin Henry "Mickey" Edwards is an American politician who was a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives, serving Oklahoma's 5th congressional district from 1977 to 1993.
Jacob Stewart Hacker is an American professor and political scientist. He is the director of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies and a professor of political science at Yale University. Hacker has written works on social policy, health care reform, and economic insecurity in the United States.
Avinash Kamalakar Dixit is an Indian-American economist. He is the John J. F. Sherrerd '52 University Professor of Economics Emeritus at Princeton University, and has been Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Economics at Lingnan University, senior research fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford and Sanjaya Lall Senior Visiting Research Fellow at Green Templeton College, Oxford.
Stephen Skowronek is an American political scientist, noted for his research on American national institutions and the U.S. presidency, and for helping to stimulate the study of American political development.
Allen Carl Guelzo is an American historian who serves as the Thomas W. Smith Distinguished Research Scholar and Director of the Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship in the James Madison Program at Princeton University. He formerly was a professor of History at Gettysburg College.
Michael P. Riccards is an American political scientist, writer, administrator, and professor. Riccards has been the president of three American colleges and has written extensively on public policy, the American political process, the papacy as a leadership problem, and the history of the American presidency. His book The Ferocious Engine of Democracy was praised by Bill Clinton. He was the founding executive director of the Hall Institute of Public Policy – New Jersey. He now is president of the American Public Policy Institute on YouTube.
Barbara Ann Perry is a presidency and U.S. Supreme Court expert, as well as a biographer of the Kennedys. She is also the Gerald L. Baliles Professor and Director of Presidential Studies at the University of Virginia's Miller Center, where she co-chairs the Presidential Oral History Program. As an oral historian, Perry has conducted more than 100 interviews for the George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush Presidential Oral History Projects, researched the President Clinton Project interviews, and directed the Edward Kennedy Oral History Project.
Thomas Edward Cronin is a political scientist. He was president of Whitman College from 1993 to 2005. He was the McHugh Professor of American Institutions and Leadership at Colorado College. Cronin's field of study is the 'expanding power of the American presidency in the 20th century'. He has also written extensively on American elections, political novels and movies.
William G. Howell is an American political scientist and author. He is the Sydney Stein Professor in American Politics at Chicago Harris and a professor in the Department of Political Science and the College at the University of Chicago. He has written widely on separation-of-powers issues and American political institutions, especially the presidency.
This bibliography of Bill Clinton is a selected list of generally available published works about Bill Clinton, the 42nd president of the United States. Further reading is available on Bill Clinton, his presidency and his foreign policy, as well as in the footnotes in those articles.
This bibliography of Woodrow Wilson is a list of published works about Woodrow Wilson, the 28th president of the United States. For a more comprehensive listing see Peter H. Buckingham, Woodrow Wilson: A bibliography of his times and presidency.
Fred Irwin Greenstein was an American political scientist, known for his work on political leadership and the US presidency.
Keith E. Whittington is an American political scientist and legal scholar. He has been the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics at Princeton University since 2006. In July 2024, he joined the Yale Law School faculty. Whittington's research focuses on American constitutionalism, American political and constitutional history, judicial politics, the presidency, and free speech and the law.
Jeffrey K. Tulis is an American political scientist known for work that conjoins the fields of American politics, political theory, and public law.